


how could you leave me here

by dripping_moonlight



Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Big Brother Warriors, Gen, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 07:35:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30052077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dripping_moonlight/pseuds/dripping_moonlight
Summary: Time had a big brother, once. They'd parted years ago and he was never the same. But here he is, years later, fighting alongside his big brother again.
Relationships: Malon (Legend of Zelda)/Time (Linked Universe), Time & Warriors (Linked Universe)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 38





	how could you leave me here

**Author's Note:**

> yes, this is a songfic. no, i'm not sorry. this time based on Welly Boots by The Amazing Devil

Time wouldn’t consider himself particularly emotional, not around his boys at least. He thought himself mature enough to mellow out his feelings so they would not affect any of his teammates or at least bury them until he reached his haven at the ranch, held against his wife’s bosom in her strong farmhand arms. But there were nights, certain times and events, that brought out every negative emotion he had for so long tried to suppress.

The night should have been just as any other—the dark sky threatening rain and nothing more—but something about the rumbling of hooves in the distance, the full moon above, or the sound of many souls sleeping quietly dragged him deep into his memories. Suddenly he was not the 40-something-year-old leader of a ragtag group of heroes clad in armor but a child with a too big sword being scolded for losing his borrowed boots.

_“What do you mean you’ve lost your boots; do you know what they cost? There’s monsters a-comin’. Move.” He’d say, and Mask would. At first it had been hard to accept that some days it was running or death._

_Once, after a close call that left his mentor bed-ridden for days, he’d asked what it was like to die—actually die forever, not the mockery of temporary death that the goddesses had subjected him to from the ripe old age of nine. The Captain thought long and hard (_ ‘for once’ _Mask teased) before signing back simply: “It’s like falling snow.” Then he smiled, as if his skin had regained its vigor and his lungs their capacity, and Mask melted into a long-deserved hug. Minutes passed in the comfortable silence before the Captain spoke, hoarsely, privately. “I love you. I’ll be with you always as long as you are kind to those who are not strong.”_

_He wasn’t; not always, at least. The little gremlin, as he was soon dubbed around the barracks, often grew bored around the grown ups and decided to entertain himself by conducting experiments, or at least that’s how he phrased it to the specific grown up who was too busy with the war business to investigate his affairs but who tried anyway. In reality, he just kicked whatever was around just to see if it would fall._

_They’d say, “That kid, he’s wrong,” but the Captain never grew angry, just stuck up for him when the Princess would call him out. And on cold nights, when his forest made tunic grew into a fragile leaf, he’d sit beside him, wrap that bright blue scarf around his shoulders. And when not even the tightly knit fabric of the scarf was enough to starve the cold, he’d press his hand’s against Mask’s cheeks, rubbing little circles with his thumbs until feeling overturned the numbness and he was ready to go into the tents with all the men who saw him as nothing more than a nuisance.  
_

A surprise breeze shook Time out of his musings. It was as if his neck was suddenly cold without the scarf from his memories.

_At one point he told Malon about his year in the time-war. She listened patiently (she always did) as he choked his way through the weeks abroad. He had hoped the initial tale would be enough to lift the sorrow of parting from his chest, but there were moments when he was a child again, angry at the world for stripping his parent away from him. Those nights he screamed into Malon’s shoulder that it wasn’t fair—none of it was but especially this. It wasn’t as if the Captain had not offered him a home, just that the guardians of time decided he should not have one._

_Later on, he tried to reshape the ache in his heart. For every memory of sorrow, he enjoyed the life the one who caused it had granted him. He told jokes he knew the Captain would’ve laughed at, did good to make him proud. Sang loud enough for the Captain to hear him in whatever dimension he was in, laugh with the strength of thunder so that his joy may vanquish his sorrows._

_And usually, it was enough. Usually, the living made the remembering easier. But there was an inner voice always nagging at him._

It was nagging again, eating away at his resolute until that very voice came beside him to drag him back into the current night.

“What’s all that frowning for, Old Man? You’re not gonna avoid any wrinkles like that,” The Captain joked easily.

“It’s not fair.” It came out louder than he intended, bubbling out of his chest with decades of pent-up anger, startling the Captain—Warriors was his name now--into sobriety, daintily manicured eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “It’s not fair!” He repeated, because he had to let it out all the way now that he had let the first stitches loose. “You were supposed to be my light! Keep me safe against them all, remember that? Remember when you said you’d be with me? How could you leave me!” He was sure he was crying now, gulping in the cold night air trying to shock his system back to normalcy.

Warriors sat there, looking every bit Time’s age and more. His hands moved when his mouth couldn’t, moving to wrap that same damn scarf around Time’s neck, and when that wasn’t enough to calm him, to hold each cheek in a calloused hand. “I knew you’d be strong enough… You’d miss me, Farore, you’d miss me,” he commented more to himself than to Time, “But you were always strong enough to do this.”

“That’s bullshit,” Time croaked, already exhausted from his outburst, “How the am I supposed to carry on when I haven’t a fucken’ clue.”

And the Captain dared to laugh. “Keep your boots on.” 


End file.
